


T'hy'la

by batty4u



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Star Trek - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 05:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batty4u/pseuds/batty4u
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The word, small and hushed as it was, encompassed a person’s whole world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	T'hy'la

**Author's Note:**

> T’hy’la  
> Vulcan, Noun: Brother, Friend, Lover.
> 
> A Character Study of Harvey's character and how certain people have fallen into place in his life, and how Mike came tumbling in and changed everything.

T’hy’la  
Vulcan, Noun: Brother, Friend, Lover.

In his life there had only ever been two people with whom he had shared a connection worthy of the precious word. The first, to no one’s surprise, was his brother Marcus.

As a kid he hadn’t cared about having a kid brother trailing after him. It was something he was proud of, the fact that he had someone who needed him, wanted him around, relied on him. Marcus had started out as a responsibility, something Harvey needed to worry about, set time aside for, give up christmas presents and birthday money for. In one swift moment, something so fast Harvey hadn’t even realized it had happen, Marcus became his world, his whole word, his one and only and everything. 

His father’s battles, a young Harvey learned at the ripe age of sixteen, were his to fight alone. He didn’t want his son’s help, he didn’t need his son’s help, he’d never admit to needing help. His mother left, packed her bags and was gone with the sun rise in the east and Harvey wasn’t sure whether he should feel anything other than resentment towards her. He knew that he should have been sad, that he should have been heart broken the way Marcus was, little Marcus only ten at the time, thinking he was the reason Mommy had left. But he’d only been angry for an hour or two before the acceptance set in and he had to get up and make lunches for he and Marcus to take to school. 

Marcus had become his reason to get up in the morning. His reason to get up, get dressed, and put on a smile each and every day so that Marcus could get to school with a lunch in hand, so that he could get home safely in time to watch his favorite TV show. His counselor at school had deemed it mildly unhealthy, that a boy his age was putting more care into the protection and guidance of his younger brother than into his own social life and academics. But Harvey had never seen any other option. Marcus was his responsibility. 

Without him he was nothing. 

In his heart he had catalogued Marcus into the first part of the special word: Brother. And there he was certain Marcus would stay, through sickness, through their pointless arguments, through grudges and arrogance and loneliness, failed marriages and abandonment. 

There he would stay.

Then along came Donna.

Donna: fire in human form, beautiful and terrifying and everything he could ever want from the world all wrapped up in a stunning green dress with a blinding smile. 

It was his first day at the DA’s. He had gotten there at the crack of dawn to set up his office and make it look like he wasn’t ready to run as fast as his feet would carry him. Everything was in it’s proper place and maybe he would admit to hiding in the tiny office until the rest of the floor had arrived and he could emerge, to make it seem like he, the new assistant DA, had been there all night working. But not moments after he had settled himself against his desk, leaning against it as he stared out the window at his city, did his secretary barge in to introduce herself.

It was the first time in a long time that Harvey had been truly speechless. 

After that?

Well as they said, it was all downhill from there. 

Donna had more or less mercilessly broken down every single wall he had spent twenty four years building up. Broken them down one by one until she could look at Harvey and see nothing but the feeble, defiant, desperate soul that flickered at his core. And she had seen something there, something Harvey still didn’t understand, that made her love him, that convinced her he was worth her time. Her power became his power and soon she was his second reason for getting up each morning. Sure, his career, his life, his five year mission to boldly go was his first and final priority, it got him through everything, kept him focused and grounded.

But even he had days where the earth crumbled beneath his feet and he faced the seemingly endless road ahead filled with terrible people doing terrible things and no matter what he did, they’d keep on hurting innocent people he wasn’t even supposed to care about. But he couldn’t help it. How was he supposed to watch people, cruel people, hateful people, murderers and rapists and monsters in men’s clothing, walk free when he had the power to keep them from hurting anyone ever again? And how was he supposed to live with the goddamn guilt whenever he failed? The guilt that festered in his stomach and stole his appetite, made it hard to face his reflection in shop windows or on Rene’s pedestal, that made his skin clammy and traced dark circles under his eyes each night. The guilt that had dragged him to each and every funeral, made him face the victims, made him nearly grovel at their feet because he had failed. Sure, he never admitted to it, but there were the few cases where he had slipped up, where Cameron’s cheating and cruelty hadn’t made the cut, and they found themselves standing at a gravesite. Well, Harvey did. Cameron didn’t care enough. So that left him to face the hollow eyes and thin lipped smiles of the people he’d let down alone.

Those were the times when Donna’s power became his own. When she would join him in his tiny shoebox office with a bottle of wine, sit with him by the windows, and listen to everything he had to say, every curse and damnation that passed his lips, each hateful thing that made his chest ache and his eyes hurt and his blood boil. Her power would keep him on his feet, the grace of her smile, the fire in her gaze, the spirit of her laugh. He fed on it, thrived when it was near, when Donna was at his side each morning and walking him out each night. 

She became his new world, his closest friend. 

Perfect, beautiful, powerful Donna became his life force, his sun. 

Marcus was his foundation.

Donna was his guide.

After that he had felt more or less complete. Jessica didn’t fit into any of the cracks properly, always fighting him, challenging him, as she should have. He had let the word slip once, when he and Jessica had smoked together on the roof one night, to celebrate his move to Junior Partner. He had muttered it to himself, joint wedged between his lips, and she had demanded he repeat it. He told her what it meant, what it meant to Kirk, what it meant to him, and she had smiled. She had smiled this fond little smile that made him feel like a lost child come home. At the time he’d hadn’t known how to feel about it, since it didn’t make him feel needed and it didn’t make him feel unwanted, and those were the two things he was most accustomed to feeling. 

It wasn’t love with Jessica, not in the way he had expected it. It was almost maternal, if Harvey could remember what maternal love felt like. Whatever it was, it made him fight just a little bit harder and he would never admit to the ever growing urge to make Jessica proud.

It wasn’t love with Scottie, no matter how hard he had tried to convince himself it was. It was broken from the start and would only end in pain he wasn’t ready to face.

It could have been love with Zoe.

He never had the chance. Fear had gotten the better of him at first, grief making his demons show and proving to himself and to her that he just wasn’t made for the life she wanted to share with him. Not yet anyway, he needed to grow, to change, to become a man so to speak. He had been heart broken the first time, when she had left, maybe even a little betrayed. But then of course, his five year mission was reaching it’s peak and he had more important things to focus on, like funerals and the color of his corner office walls. 

The second time Zoe appeared in his life, he had finally grown up. He liked to think that, were the circumstances different, he would have been exactly what she needed. That he would have been brave enough to look her in the eye and say all the things he’d neglected to, that he’d be man enough, human enough, to hold her and make promises he would keep, if for no one else but little Olivia. 

But he hadn’t and she was gone with the sunrise in the east.

Funny how things seemed to repeat themselves in life. 

Of course it seemed that life, when it became almost predictable and boring, threw together just the right mixture of timing, fate, desperation, and curiosity, to set off an explosion that shook Harvey to his core and brought his world crumbling around him. 

That explosion, in case there was some sort of confusion, would be Mike.

Mike came barreling into Harvey’s life with a briefcase of pot, blue eyes that were still filled with some old world innocence Harvey had long forgotten, and a gold heart dangling from his ratty sleeve. Harvey looked the kid right in the eye and the world around him fell silent, silent and still and everything turned cold and pulsed with electricity. He wondered to himself, as he tried to remember how to breathe, if that was what it felt like in space. If the shock of the moment, the deafening silence, the lack of oxygen to the point you felt like you were suffocating, was as close to the feeling of empty space as he would ever get.

And then Mike opened his mouth to explain and the world set itself into fast forward, a whirl of bright color and lightening under Harvey’s skin and his heart leapt for reasons he’d never understand. Somewhere in the distance he was sure he could hear the bomb siren, signalling the end of all things. He could hear the crumbling of Manhattan outside his window, the dying cry of voices and the thunderous roar of the ground opening up and swallowing his city whole.

But the light in Mike’s eyes promised him something. 

And for the first time in years, Harvey felt hope.

And that hope grew.

It grew and grew until each morning Harvey woke with that beautiful warm sensation in his chest, the lightning in his nerves, the crisp air of a New York morning filling his lungs and he felt something akin to joy. It grew until he was no longer afraid of the skeletons in his closet or the monsters under his bed or the haunting voices in his ear reminding him of all the failures in his life. 

Months passed and he let Mike slowly work himself into his life, but never close enough for comfort. Months and days and minutes inched on and they fought, they quarreled. Harvey shouted and swore and told him he was a mistake, his biggest mistake and even as the words left him he knew that it was a lie. Mike could never have been a mistake, not matter how he tried to look at it. Mike was the universe’s way of slapping Harvey upside the head and telling him to get his shit together, to open his eyes again, to live. And as much as Harvey hated it, he thrived on it, craved it, needed the fight and the spark and the tingling under his skin and the skip in his heart beat whenever Mike looked to him for approval.   
He had someone to guide, someone to care for, someone to take responsibility for, someone who would follow him to the end, straight into hell, just the way Marcus and Donna had. 

But it felt different.

Marcus had become his own man, starting out on his own five year journey with a crew of his own. He was still his brother, still a large part of his world, but Harvey knew that things had change, would change, because no one deserved to be held back from their potential. And Marcus was going to change the world. Harvey knew he would.

Donna was still there, still his friend and confidant and closest companion. She was still the one to rag on him and tease him and ruin his life in her cunning little ways. She helped piece him back together when he was broken, helped him get back on his feet, but even she had noticed a shift in the world when Mike had waltzed/stumbled/fallen face first into their lives. 

hey both knew that Mike no longer sat on the outskirts of the word.

He had somehow, without Harvey noticing, slid into the realm of brother, when his lips curled into a fond smile each time Harvey teased him, as his hands pressed against Harvey’s chest and held him back, keeping him from attacking Louis, when his eyes brightened at the sight of Harvey in the crowd. He’d become his brother when he’d finally gone to Harvey for help, needed him, wanted him around, asked for his guidance, when he had gone to the edge of reason to help Harvey, even if a part of him knew Harvey deserved whatever consequences he received. 

He had become Harvey’s friend through inside jokes and casual touches shared in the office, over early morning coffee and late night drives to Atlantic City. Through light hearted insults and loving smiles, through graveyards, warzones, and the fallout of everything they held dear. Mike had stood at his side, unafraid, unwavered, following his captain. 

His Captain.

Didn’t that have a nice ring to it. 

Whatever it was that Mike had become in Harvey’s life, it felt right. It felt natural and safe, filled with comfort and a kindness he had never allowed himself. 

For example the comfort that came with the third part of the word. 

After Zoe it just hadn’t seemed right. One night stands without love and lazy mornings worked for him. He’d grown accustomed to the loneliness that came with it. And then Mike was sleeping on Harvey’s sofa, tucked away safely in his condo after a night out with clients, looking for all the world like there was nowhere else he’d rather be. And their pinkie fingers were hooked together in the backseat of the town car, so Mike could avoid a panic attack. And Harvey was teaching Mike to slow dance in his office after everyone had left, under the guise of wanting to avoid embarrassment at the gala. And he was picking out a birthday present for Mike, and defending him without question, and hoping each morning that he’d still find him sitting in his cubicle, waiting for him with a smile. 

Somewhere along the way he had fallen.

Oh how hard he had fallen. 

And oh how happy it made him. 

For Harvey, there was no better word. Pet names never came close. Labels used by their colleagues fell flat and empty. And maybe it was childish, silly, a little boy’s attempts to cling to something greater than himself. But when he stood by the window, listening to Mike, his Mike, rattle off a list of legal jargon that would somehow win their case, it felt like something had fallen into place, that Mike had firmly seated himself in each little niche the word attempted to express, filled every void, nook, loophole, and cranny.

The word, small and hushed as it was, encompassed a person’s whole world.

With a smile, Harvey realized Mike now did the same.


End file.
